


can't see them clearly

by pprfaith



Series: Wishlist 2016 [8]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: A spot of kidnapping, Alternate Universe, Avenger Loki, Buffy Insert, F/M, Immortal Buffy, Married Couple, Not Beta Read, Prompt Fic, Sequel, Unconventional Relationship, Wishlist_Fic, outsider's POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 21:28:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8816803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: In which Natasha watches and tries to figure out what Buffy and Loki see in each other.(Wishlist, Day 8)





	

**Author's Note:**

> For sammie-smiles, who asked for a sequel to _I wouldn't dare (to fix the twist in you)_ , yet another Buffy/Loki verse I got prompted last year. The prompt called for all the times people misunderstand the realtionship and the one time they figure it out. I went with Nat' POV throughout. I hope you enjoy.
> 
> The title, just as the last one, is from Sick Puppies' 'All the Same'. Recommended listening.

+

For the longest time, Natasha doesn’t even know Loki’s married. 

It’s been years since New York, years since he was actually their enemy, years of occasionally joining forces and somehow getting used to each other. 

Years of getting to know each other, up to a point where Loki actually has his own set of rooms in the Tower and they start wondering where the hell he is whenever he goes missing for more than a couple of months. 

And all this time, Natasha has no idea that Loki is a married man.

When she does finally find out, it’s along with the rest of the team and mostly by accident. 

They’ve just finished wiping Manhattan with Dr. Doom’s newest robotic minions when Loki up and disappears. 

“He keeps doing that lately. Hot date?” Clint asks, more or less without expecting an answer. 

Thor, wiping something goopy off his hammer, shrugs. “I expect my brother is spending time with his wife.”

For a long moment, there is absolute silence over comms. 

Then Tony blurts, “What do you mean, ‘wife’?”

Thor stops frowning at Mjolnir long enough to look up and notice the startled expressions on Bruce’s and Natasha’s faces – the only ones close enough for a visual.

“My brother has been married these past two years. Has he not told you?”

In Tony’s words: big whopping no on that one. 

+

Of course she studies the god of tricks after that announcement. It’s who Natasha, who the Black Widow is. 

She learns people, their habits, their wants and needs. What makes them tick and how to change that ticking to her own tune. 

And she’s good at it. 

She compares Loki before his marriage to Loki after his apparent marriage. Different patterns of behavior. Different attitudes. 

And she finds nothing. 

He still pops in and out at his usual intervals – which are anything from a few days to several months. Only occasionally does it seem like he disappears more than usual, but he always makes up for that by more appearances soon after.

He still flirts with Tony shamelessly, going so far as to proposition the mad engineer at least once a battle. They’re so bad that Cap still cringes and the press regularly assumes they have an affair. 

He’s still as moody and unpredictable as he always has been, as snooty and arrogant and brilliant and vicious. No signs of mellowing out. 

Sure, he’s not trying to take over the world or randomly murder people anymore, but Natasha doesn’t have enough data to draw any conclusions on why that is. According to Thor, the vicious-but-not-lethal Loki they have been enjoying for the past few years is actually truer to character than the one they first met during the Tesseract Incident. 

So, as far as Natasha can tell, the fact that Loki’s married hasn’t changed him at all. 

She concludes that his wife, whoever she is, apparently doesn’t have much impact on the god, and leaves it at that. As long as she can still semi-predict Loki’s actions, she doesn’t really care about his private life. 

He’s from a world where political marriages are still common practice. Assuming that he has the same concept of marriage as most of Earth does would be narrow-minded and stupid. 

Loki is married. It has no impact on his behavioral patterns. That’s all she needs to know. 

+

Once, just once, she overhears Clint trying to tickle Loki for information by going down the route of commiseration. 

“Laura’s nagging,” he tells the sorcerer with a sigh. “It’s always do this, be home more, fix the dining room. I love her, but sometimes,” he shrugs, lets Loki fill in the blanks. “Does yours do that, man?”

Loki, sitting on the sofa with a book in his hand that’s probably older than most of the Avengers taken together, gives Clint a lazy look. 

“No,” he says.

+

She meets Buffy more than a year later, when the woman pops into the Avengers main floor in a flash of light and sound. 

She lands in a crouch, twin swords strapped to her back, hands out at her sides. “I come in peace!” she hollers, just in time for Tony to pull back the repulsor blast he was about to fire at her face. 

They all withdraw a few feet, waiting. She straightens to a less than impressive height, giving Natasha a quick chance to take her in. The swords are not her only weapons. There are daggers in her boots and something hidden in the waistband of the leather pants she’s wearing, in the inside pockets of the zippered jacket. And she’s not positive, but she thinks the woman’s blonde bun might contain a surprise or two, as well. She’s a strange mixture of modern and archaic, but she wears it like she’s used to it.

She also looks about Natasha’s age, around thirty, well-aged and smoothly tanned. Friendly face, really. Pretty and forgettable. 

Thor, who was mucking about in the gym, finally arrives just as the woman is about to explain. 

“Sister!” he hollers, surging past Bruce and Tony to sweep her into one of his rib-crushing hugs. 

The woman tolerates it for a count of three, then digs her thumbs into the space between shoulder and neck on either side of the god’s throat, forcing him to release her. 

“Thor,” she greets, a lot less enthused. “Where the hell is my husband?”

The thunderer blinks at her, confused. “Is he not with you?”

She rolls her eyes and, against her will, Natasha finds herself liking the other woman. 

“If he were, I wouldn’t be here. We had a date for Samhain, he didn’t show.”

“Whoa,” Sam supplies. “Halloween? That was, like, a month ago. You’re only looking for him now?”

She waves a hand at the Falcon. “Sometimes he runs late. But not a month and not when we have a date. So. Loki?”

“We haven’t seen him in weeks,” Steve supplies. “Since before Halloween, I think.”

“The twenty-first,” Natasha supplied. “Giant crabs in the sewers.”

Loki’s wife snorts. “So many jokes, so little time,” she chirps, then settles her hands on her hips. “Alright. Apparently, Loki’s missing. Anyone up for helping me find him?”

She seems more resigned than concerned. 

+

Buffy is from Earth, apparently. She didn’t marry Loki for any practical purposes, but simply because she wanted to. Underwent Odin’s trials to gain the Asgardian brand of immortality and everything. 

Trials that, from what Thor tells them, many don’t survive. 

“All for Reindeer Games?” Tony asks, only half joking, from where he’s helping JARVIS track Loki after the crab battle.

Buffy shrugs. “He’s worth it,” she says, a little smile on her face, as if it hadn’t taken her an entire month to notice her husband is missing. As if not seeing each other for months and months isn’t normal for them. 

Thor and Jane, Tony and Pepper, Clint and Laura. Natasha has seen enough long distance couples to know that that’s not how it usually works. There are phone calls and messages involved, sleepless nights. _Missing_. 

Buffy seems concerned for Loki, eager to find him, yes, if it were an Avenger missing a spouse, there would be a lot more yelling, panicking and hair-yanking. 

It’s noticeable enough that Natasha pulls Thor aside. “Do you think she could have something to do with his disappearance?” she asks, voice low. 

Thor doesn’t look surprised, just shuffles his feet, avoids her gaze uncomfortably. He’s noticed it too. 

“That’s not normal behavior,” she supplies, encouraging him to talk.

He shrugs. “My brother and the Lady Slayer have ere been this way, my friend. When they are together, they are together. And when they are apart, they are apart. You have a phrase in your tongue, I believe,” he says, licks his lips, searching for it. Then, remembering, he tells her, “Out of sight, out of mind, that is the one I mean.”

He looks back into the lab where Buffy is perched between Sam and Wanda, studying a screen. “But she would not harm him, nor he her. Trust me on this.”

He smiles and takes his leave, as grandiose as ever, leaving Natasha to mouth, ‘out of sight, out of mind’ to herself. She was raised in a lab to be an assassin and even she knows that’s not how relationships are supposed to work. 

She resolves to keep an eye on Buffy.

+

They find Loki three days later, in the hands on a minor villain, who had the sheer dumb luck to stumble over a device that can nullify magic, leaving Loki without his primary weapon. He locked the god in a containment chamber and tried to get him to work for him. 

Once they have the bad guy locked up and Loki out of his cell, he shrugs. “A very dull vacation, I’ll grant you, but not a harmful one,” he summarizes the whole mess.

Then he takes Buffy’s offered hand and walks out of the building, leaving the rest of the Avengers to stare after him.

“You know,” Tony supplies via comms, “I think maybe being in this business too long skews your perspective on things.”

“What things?” Cap asks, absently.

“Mortal peril? Imprisonment? Life threatening situations?” Tony rattles off.

“Marriage?” Clint adds. 

+

They go for drinks. Tony’s insistence. 

“Your better half is in town. I demand to get to know her. Let’s go.”

Buffy just laughs, strips off most of her weapons and spreads her arms, ordering Loki, “Do me.”

Her husband rolls his eyes and obediently snaps his fingers in her direction, putting her in slim black pants and a loose shirt, a leather coat over top. His own clothes change into jeans, dress shirt and waistcoat, his usual when he’s trying to pass for mortal. 

Buffy gives him an appreciative once over that’s the first sign of anything _normal_ Natasha has seen out of either of them. 

They take their own vehicles to the bar. Parking is a pain, but it draws less attention if they arrive in small groups, than it would if they all arrived together in a limo. 

By the time Natasha gets there with Clint, the others have already snagged a few tables at the back. Thor, Tony and Sam are playing pool. Wanda and Steve are dancing. Bruce is at the bar, so is Buffy. 

Loki, who was watching their tables, passes them over to her and Clint and makes his way through the relatively small Tuesday evening crowd toward where his wife is waiting for her order. 

Natasha sits and watches them. 

Loki, a full head taller than his wife, bends down to whisper something in her ear. She laughs, head thrown back, and stays that way, leaning against his shoulder. 

When their orders arrive, she keeps the beer for herself and passes him the fruity blue concoction, much to the bartender’s amusement. Loki chuckles, takes a sip and then passes it back to her. She takes both drinks and turns to head back to the table. Loki stays molded to her back, his hands on her hips, using his height and breadth to carve a path for her through the dancers. 

Both of them are smiling, still bantering, and utterly blind to the eyes following them across the room. 

When they finally reach Natasha, she’s alone, Clint gone to hustle Tony at the pool table. 

They drop down into adjacent chairs, their legs immediately tangling into each other. Buffy is still teasing Loki about the blue drink, which he sips imperiously. “It tastes delicious,” he informs her, utterly above her needling. 

Natasha chuckles.

They both turn, giving her very similar raised eyebrows. She laughs out loud. “I thought it was carelessness,” she confesses, apropos of nothing. 

But Loki is possibly smarter than even their resident genius, and Buffy somehow keeps up with him. They get it. 

“And now?” the god of tricks asks around his smurf cocktail. 

She nods, once, briefly. For all the things the Black Widow was taught, trust was never one of them. Recognizing it in other people is hard, still. 

“I think so,” she allows. 

Loki taps his glass with a finger, duplicating his drink. Another tap turns the copy red. He sets it down in front of Natasha.

Buffy, giggling, snuggles into his shoulder and sips her beer, seeming perfectly content. 

+

**Author's Note:**

> Come tumble with me [here](http://www.wordsformurder.tumblr.com/).


End file.
